David McLain

Photograph by Deborah Hardt

David McLain lives with his wife and two children in a 200-year-old farmhouse outside Portland, Maine, a place that triggers "an instinctual sense of belonging" in him, he says. "My family, my home, and Maine ground me and fuel the boundless sense of possibility and hope I bring to my work."

McLain's photographs have appeared in National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, and National Geographic Adventure, as well as Men's Journal, Sports Illustrated, Skiing, Wine Spectator, Fortune, Life, and Smithsonian. He also works for commercial clients, such as US Airways, the Nature Conservancy, Eastern Mountain Sports, and the American Skiing Company.

He has shot assignments in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, Central and South America, Greenland, and British Columbia.

McLain has received honors in the Communication Arts Photography Annual for two consecutive years, as well as numerous awards in the National Press Photographers Association Pictures of the Year competition.

McLain has recently become interested in the shifting media landscape and new possibilities for visual communication. He co-founded Merge, a boutique company dedicated to telling stories through still photographs and moving images across an array of media. "This new endeavor gives me the same kind of feeling I got when I first watched a black and white print come to life in a tray of Dektol 30 years ago," he says.